The Races at Longchamp

The Races at Longchamp is an oil on canvas painting from 1866 by the French painter Édouard Manet, measuring about 84.5 by 43.9 centimetres and held today at the Art Institute of Chicago. It shows the finish of the Grand Prix de Paris horse race at the Longchamp racecourse in Paris, with the horses charging directly toward the viewer rather than shown in profile, an unusual composition for the time. Manet made several versions of the subject over about four years, using a flattened picture plane and blurred brushwork to suggest speed, and though early critics dismissed the picture as a mere sketch it is now regarded as a finished and influential treatment of a fashionable contemporary leisure scene.